New York Times

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would disclose after-the-fact changes to its opinions, a common practice that had garnered little attention until a law professor at Harvard wrote about it last year.

The court also took steps to address “link rot” in its decisions. A study last year found that nearly half of hyperlinks in Supreme Court opinions no longer work.

And the court said it would bar “line standers” who hold places for lawyers eager to see high profile arguments.

The move on editing is a major development. Though changes in the court’s opinions after they are issued are common, the court has only very seldom acknowledged them.

Many of the changes fix spelling or factual errors. Others are more substantial, amending or withdrawing legal conclusions.

Starting this term, a court statement said, “post-release edits to slip opinions on the court’s website will be highlighted and the date they occur will be noted.”

The court’s website includes sample opinions to show how all of this will work. “The location of a revision will be highlighted in the opinion,” the statement said. “When a cursor is placed over a highlighted section, a dialogue box will open to show both old and new text.”

The court’s unorthodox after-the-fact editing was the subject of an article in The Harvard Law Review by Richard J. Lazarus. He said Monday’s announcement was good news.

“This is a welcome step by the court to correct a problem that has persisted for more than a century, and which was exacerbated in recent years by modern technology,” Professor Lazarus said. “The court deserves praise for its willingness to make transparent its corrections of past mistakes in its slip opinions.”

But slip opinions are early versions of the court’s rulings. It is not clear, Professor Lazarus said, whether the court would take additional steps later in the editing process, which can last five years before authoritative hardcover books are produced, to make all changes public.

The court said it would also address what it called “the problem of ‘link rot,’ where Internet material cited in court opinions may change or cease to exist.” The court will now collect and post the materials it links to on a dedicated page on its site.

The move seemed to have been prompted by news media coverage of a study showing that about half of 555 links in Supreme Court opinions did not work. A second study called the situation dire.

“It is disturbing that even at the Supreme Court, where creating and citing precedent is of the utmost importance, citations often fail to point the researcher to the authority on which the court based its decision,” Raizel Liebler and June Liebert, librarians at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, wrote in the second study, “Something Rotten in the State of Legal Citation.”

The court also took a step toward addressing the unruly scene in front of the courthouse on days it hears major arguments. “Only bar members who actually intend to attend argument are allowed in line for the bar section,”the court said on its website, referring to the part of the courtroom set aside for members of the Supreme Court bar.

The announcement appeared to be a half measure, as it did not address the separate line for members of the public.

“Allowing line-standing companies and scalpers to sell seats in the Supreme Court is yet another instance of letting money dominate democracy,” Michael J. Sandel, a political philosopher at Harvard, said in 2013. “It’s at odds with equal access and undermines the dignity of the court.”